Why Your Website Doesn’t Matter and What To Do Instead

I see this happening often as a new business, a new entrepreneur, you get really excited to launch your business and you pour money into creating a website, getting a fancy photoshoot done, get your business cards designed all pretty and printed up and then nothing. The sales aren’t pouring in, the inquiries aren’t happening, the traffic just isn’t there.

So you re-brand, or you shuffle things around on your website, you change your colors, you do more photoshoots, you try ever-more random marketing tactics in desperation. But the thing is, your website is not the main problem.

The problem is that your customers aren’t buying from you because they don’t really know why they should.

Why Your Website Is Not the Problem

Often the temptation to tinker with websites and social media posts when things aren’t going well is a lack of strategy and clear vision for your actions. It’s much easier and more fun to play around with the logo, brand colors or website than it is to do the hard work which might be understanding what your customers are struggling with, what they want, and getting clear on your niche or what makes you unique.

It’s easier to hide behind a nice website amidst this confusion and hope that someone will find your website and sign up for your newsletter.

But a pretty website cannot hide a weak business idea.

People need to understand who your product is for, what it will do for them, why your product is different, and why you. And they aren’t buying simply because they just don’t understand those pieces and no amount of tinkering with your website, changing it’s colors or the photos is going to change that.

What You Need to Do Instead

Drop the tinkering and go back to basics. You can’t have a website if you don’t have strong business foundations.

Build Strong Business Foundations

Before you build a website, you need to know you have a good business idea. Focus your time, energy and money instead on really understanding your offer:

Talk to your potential customers to understand what problems the really need solving – not what YOU think they need solving. Really listen to what they have to say and try not to be biased to your own views.

Understand your product’s place in the market. How is your product different? Does it fill a gap in the market place? Is it an improvement on an existing product? In what way?

Learn how to communicate better to resonate with your target customers (if you can’t convince them you can solve their problems, you’ll have a hard time succeeding).

A website is just a tool, it’s not meant to be your only marketing strategy but you need to build strong business foundations before you can build a marketing strategy.

Create Some Discipline

Resist the temptation to go and do more stuff to your website or photoshoots, or brand colors or logo or whatever it is, unless you know exactly how it all fits together in a strategy, with clear objectives and measures for success. Again, this comes back to it being much easier and more likely fun to play around with random tactics than it is to create the discipline and ask the hard questions to get clear on your business foundations.

Focus on the Relationship

None of the marketing tactics work if you’re not building up a relationship with your customers, offering something that they want, providing value with your messaging. Guiding people down a path of what they want and building a relationship with your customers is the most important piece to having customers trust you, stay with you, buy from you. Websites are just a tool for that.

Focusing on cultivating and nourishing that long-term relationship helps to not only build that know, like and trust factor but allows you to stay on top of your customer’s needs. It allows you to have a conversation with them and be more responsive to their needs and wants. Building a relationship also helps to create more referrals, because it’s not just about the product or results from the product, but the whole experience with your brand. This experience, and the accompanying feelings and desires that a customer may be seeking, create an impression which makes them more likely to recall your business and refer it to others.